Bishop Fellay sees the primary problem of Vatican II in the very texts it issued: they are not univocal. Bishop Fellay is certainly not the first to point this out. Anyone who has read the texts of Vatican II is aware of the many phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that leave one wondering: exactly what does this mean? There have been books written on the various interpretations and hermeneutics of Vatican II. That's fine for an enduring literary work, but it's not good for a conciliar text.

 

Bishop Fellay is typically precise in his analysis and direct in what he says. In his interview on the occasion of the SSPX meeting in Rimini he again provides a very incisive picture of SSPX-Church relations.

Bishop Fellay sees the primary problem of Vatican II in the very texts it issued: they are not univocal.

Bishop Fellay is certainly not the first to point this out. Anyone who has read the texts of Vatican II is aware of the many phrases, sentences, and paragraphs that leave one wondering: exactly what does this mean? There have been books written on the various interpretations and hermeneutics of Vatican II. That's fine for an enduring literary work, but it's not good for a conciliar text.

Bishop Fellay points to another problem with issuing texts rather than simply doctrinal points: "A hermeneutic of continuity ought to presuppose as well continuity in the kind of language employed. Now, we can easily see that, while the definitions of Councils in the past retain their clarity and are recognizable as definitions even today, the language of VCII appears today as out-dated, linked to a 1960’s mentality, and profoundly different from the language of our own day. Would it then be necessary, as Cardinal Martini wanted, to hold a Council for each generation?"

He's right. It's language and mentality. The Council Fathers dealt with modernity just as it was about to slip into postmodernity and, as Tracey Rowland has demonstrated, they didn't even have an adequate hermeneutic at that.
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And there is this from journalist Alessandro Gnocchi who was there: "The acts of the Pope that can be defined as “in conformity” with the previous [papal] 'style' are not those which shall live on in history: before long, no one will remember the visits to mosques or to Lutheran churches. Instead, what is striking is Summorum Pontificum, the lifting of the excommunications, the opening of theological dialogue with the SSPX, the letter to bishops following the outcry over the lifting [of the excommunications], and, in a different arena, the speech at Ratisbon and the Year for Priests.

"'Extending a “line of credit” to the SSPX, according to Gnocchi, has profoundly displaced certain categories of Catholics that were quite at home in the cultural climate of the last pontificate. He defined such persons as 'polite conservatives' or 'quibblers' [uomini cavillo]: those, that is—and everyone was invited to list for himself the names of such—who were accustomed to the necessity of always choosing 'a lesser evil,' who always managed to find some line or comma in every document from the Bishops Conferences that could give comfort to their consciences as self-described good Catholics.

"Those, in other words, who believed themselves to be seated at the extreme right of the 'Conciliarly correct' find themselves shoved aside, and they consider it extremely irritating."
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Alessandro Gnocchi makes an important point here: the reintroduction of the SSPX as "players" has profoundly displaced and disturbed the "usual suspects," who were used to the forms and practices of the previous pontificate. Gnocchi puts their situation extremely well in the last paragraph: the "conciliarly correct" (or "neocons" or pick your own term) thought they were the "orthodox" and have now been challenged by ascendant traditional Catholics, hitherto marginalized and told they were just "fringe."

I'm sure we've all seen this irritation among those who were the lions of the Catholic blogosphere just a few years ago and now realize that things have changed. Of course, they still deny that "traditionalists" (which they insist on calling us) will ever really matter, but they are awfully defensive about it.

DE:http://gregorianrite2007.blogspot.com/